Date   : Wed, 23 Oct 1991 06:04:58 GMT
From   : csus.edu!csusac!sactoh0!ijpc!ianj@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu (Ian Justman)
Subject: Re: HELP! MY COMPUTER IS DEAD!

kwgst@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Filip Gieszczykiewicz) writes:

>   Greetings. And while you have the soldering iron out, check all
>   the solid tantalum caps! I've seen everything from SCSI drives
>   to Heath 'scopes have shorted tantalums as the problem. I think
>   this is because people consider them to be infalible and Murphy's
>   law is always waiting for an occasion like this ;-)
> 
>   Take care.

Sounds akin to a modified saying, "a $5,000 computer will protect
a $0.10 fuse by blowing first", right?  This is mainly if you're
either reading heavy current draw, or if worse comes to worse,
your switching supply crowbars.  I've worked on an XT motherboard
where the power supply was crowbaring due to the fact that a
capacitor, and interestingly enough, a tanty, was shorted out.
All supplies went dead the instant the supply was fired up.


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